"
"In that case," said the millionaire, "if you drink a little too much
occasionally--only occasionally, I mean!--you would not call that
intemperance?"
"Certainly not. We are not Puritans here. We do not give wrong names to
things. What you suggest would be by the way of a change, I
presume--like the eating of a pike: something we do not indulge in every
day. If I were to come home a little joyful now and then, do you know
what these people would say? They would say: 'The old gentleman is
pleased to be merry to-night. Bless his heart! May the wind do him
good.' But if I behaved as Miss Wilberforce is reported to do, they
would say: 'That old man is losing self-control. He is growing
intemperate. Every evening! It is not a pretty sight.' They never call
it wrong. Their mode of condemnation is to say that it is not pretty.
The ethical moment, you observe, is replaced by an aesthetic one. That
is the Mediterranean note. It is the merit of the Roman Church that she
left us some grains of common sense in regard to minor morals.
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